“Judging from this result, we should exceed 150,000 tickets sold,” said Katarina Nyman, general manager of Finland’s Nordisk Film, which also released the number 2 and 3 in the charts: Finnish director Dome Karukoski’sThe Grump [+] and Swedish filmmaker Leif Lindblom’s Finnish production of TheRaspberry Boat Refugee. “Our local films generated close to 62% of the weekend’s total attendance,” she added.

“Exit polls show that children and families flocked to the theatres to watch the Moomins, but we also managed to get teenagers and audiences in their 20s into the cinema; now come the school holidays, and there is little competition with other family films, so the lifetime of the movie looks promising.”

The 77-minute feature is ready with Finnish, Swedish, French and English dialogues; Paris-based Indie Sales has so far closed deals for Switzerland (with Praesens), Israel (Orlando), the Middle East (Shooting Stars), Japan (Phantom) and Hong Kong (Edko), while Benelux is next, according to head of sales Nicolas Eschbach.